


these fragments i have shored against my ruins

by AllOfThisMatter



Category: Leverage
Genre: Board Games, Chinese Food, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 22:47:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9038126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllOfThisMatter/pseuds/AllOfThisMatter
Summary: “Why is Eliot leaving?” Parker demands as she jumps up after him.  Hardison pulls her back with a gentle hand.
   “Baby, he’s just gotta go sometimes.  He’s gonna come back.  Always does.  Right, Eliot?”  Hardison raises his voice at Eliot’s retreating form.  He pauses for a moment, shoulders tense.  “Damn straight,” is all he manages in reply before reaching the kitchen. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~A job goes way south and Eliot almost doesn't get there in time.  Almost.  Being out of commission for a while forces him to face himself.  And his feelings.Parker and Hardison just want to take care of their Eliot.





	

He’s so tired. There's blood leaking into his eyes from a gaping head wound, a ragged whining in his left ear, and the painful creak of at least three fractured or broken ribs, a bruised lung. _So tired._

But Eliot keeps throwing knees, elbows, fists, feet, gaining inch by painful inch. He’s so tired, but Parker’s eyes are starting to flutter closed and Hardison’s breathing is shallowing by the second. And there’s this _roaring_ in his blood, in his ears, pouring from his throat as he tears forward. The noise is furious, suffocating, but nowhere near as horrifying as the silence growing around his teammates.

The quiet is still metastasizing as he reaches them finally, _finally,_ and injects them both with the antidote. There’s a few agonizing moments where he thinks he was too slow before Hardison’s breath deepens and steadies, before Parker’s eyes register his face and she raises a hand to brush some bloodied locks from his forehead. He feels like he’s been emptied out but he smiles weakly at her touch, whispers that it’s going to be okay.

Eliot slings Hardison’s unconscious— _but breathing, beating, alive_ — body over his shoulder and lifts Parker into his arms. She keeps her eyes locked on his face as he carries them all out of the gunshot-riddled warehouse. It’s that stare so uniquely _Parker_ that would normally have Eliot crawling the walls, but this is different. Softer. Silent. He tries to keep his gaze fixed on the exit and then on the van, afraid of what he might see if he returned her stare.

Quietly, gently, he sets Parker down in the back of the van and lays Hardison beside her, carefully placing his head in her lap. His instincts pull him towards the drivers’ side door and behind the steering wheel, away from the scene of so much horror as fast as possible with his injured, fragile, _priceless_ cargo. There’s a small part of him that just wants to curl around the both of them, cover as much of their weakened frames as he can with his own sturdy limbs and just rest, but he furiously pushes that down, pursues instead his rational processes.

He catches her eyes again in the rear view mirror. Her hands are stroking Hardison’s face and arms but her eyes never leave him. A stronger Eliot would have growled a warning and sped up. This Eliot gives another faint smile, a nod, and puts his eyes back on the road. He splits his focus to employ his breathing techniques, keep his chest cavity in stasis until he can get himself wrapped, and drives.

When they finally reach the brew pub, Eliot feels himself starts to fade as he hauls open the van’s back doors and reaches for Hardison.

“Eliot, wait. I can help you.”

“Parker, you’re still working that poison out of your system and your wrist is twisted, don’t worry about this, I’ll take him,” he growled, voice rougher than he intended it to be.

“And you’ve got three cracked ribs. Let me help you. We can take him together if you just put him on my right side.”

He’s just battered enough to give in and let her help him walk Hardison’s limp frame all the way back to their med bay.

They heave Hardison onto a bed and give him some more of the antidote, as well as a saline drip; Eliot knows that his teammate’s three days of deep grifting had taken their toll, and dehydration is the last thing he needs while flushing the rest of the poison out of his system. Next, Eliot practically forces Parker into the bed next to Hardison’s by sheer stubbornness. She’s silent after her protests, and watching him again as he cleans the lacerations on Hardison’s wrists and the gash on his cheek, wrapping each wound with a tenderness she had learned to associate with exhaustion and worry on Eliot’s part. Then he flexes her wrist, sets it gently, and cleans the burn on her shoulder and hands her a bottle of water before sinking into a chair on the other side of the room. 

Parker watches as his sure, sturdy hands wrap his ribs, pausing now and then to wipe blood from his swelling eye, but suddenly he can’t keep his eyes open anymore and the last thing he’s aware of is her frantic shout of Eliot as she jumps from the bed. He is gone before she reaches him, gone gone gone into the black silence he can’t stand.

~~~~~~

He wakes with a start, arms already tensed to start swinging when a broad palm presses against his undamaged shoulder, accompanied by a soft _shh shh shh shh it’s alright._ Hardison is on the bed beside him, in the apartment attached to the brew pub. He’s blinking away sleep as he tries to soothe Eliot, and he can’t help the ache in his chest at the thought of Hardison keeping watch for him all night. That’s his kind of job. Not theirs.

Parker descends in a flurry of rigging from the ceiling and is by the bedside hardly before he registers her presence. The lethargy in his limbs tells him that they must have drugged him.

“Hi Eliot,” she says in her particular Parker way. “Are you feeling any better?”

He blinks at the both of them, at the gentle pressure of Hardison’s long fingers still curled around his shoulder, at the brush of Parker’s hand across his forehead. _What is happening?_

“Di..” he starts, but has to pause to clear the thickness of pain and drugs from his scorched throat. “Did y’all drug me?”

Hardison’s hand tenses and Eliot resists the impulse to shiver. “We had to, man. Honest to God, it wasn’t our first plan of action,” Hardison reasons.

“We had to. You kept waking up and thrashing around. Hurting all your hurts and making new ones and shouting for us,” Parker chimes in, studying the furrows in his brow. She cocks her head to the side. “We had to give you a double dose in order to get you to stay down and rest.”

Shame burning him from the inside out, he finally sits up and extricates himself from their closeness. His ribs and shoulder scream from the upward motion but he swings his legs out of bed and moves to the pile of clothing on the chair in the corner. That’s when he realizes he’s not wearing his own garments, but a tee shirt and a pair of sweats of Hardison’s, respectively too tight on his chest and arms and too long, if the rolled cuffs are any indication. 

Something other than shame catches fire in his chest as he thinks of them stripping him of his scorched, bloodied clothing. Washing him and tending his wounds. His hair smells like Parker’s favorite cinnamon shampoo. That’s also when he discovers several complicated braids in his mane that simultaneously frustrate and amuse him.

“You didn’t have to do any of that,” he grits out. “I was going to head home and get cleaned up. Meditate. Make some tea.”

Parker snorts and opens her mouth but Hardison shoots her a look.

“Man, you suffered severe head trauma, three fractured ribs, a bruised lung, and a twisted shoulder. You weren’t gonna make it farther than the door. I really am sorry we had to drug you but you were just gonna get hurt worse if we didn’t.”

“That’s not the point, Hardison!”

Eliot begins to sift through the pile of clothes in the chair. Of course, none of them are what he’d been wearing on the job— those must have surely been unsalvageable. Instead, there’s a soft button down, heather grey. A leather jacket, just like the burned one, with white bars on the sleeves. A worn-in pair of jeans and shiny black boots. The shirt and pants are his, but the jacket and boots are brand new and they look— they look like they were made by his usual shop in Oklahoma. Eliot begins to feel so unworthy, so suffocated by all of this care and consideration.

“What is the point, Eliot?” Parker asks as she sits beside Hardison and curls into him.

Eliot is silent for a few beats as he exchanges Hardison’s sweats for his own jeans and pulls on the new boots. Fitted to his instep, even. He’s almost incredulous for a moment, but then he remembers what these two are capable of. In his mind he hears Hardison’s classic phrase. _Age of the geek, baby._ Back still turned to them, he speaks. 

“I’m supposed to be touchable, so that the two of you are untouchable. It’s not your job to take-take care of me. I don’t- I don’t want or need to be taken care of.” 

He slowly lifts the tee shirt, breathing through the shrieking of his ribs and shoulder, and shrugs on the button down. He’s still closing it up as he turns around. None of them speak as he threads buttons through holes, but for the faintest moment he sees the both of them staring at his chest.

Hardison swallows and blinks, looks away, fidgets with his hands.

“Why is Eliot being dumb?” Parker asks into her boyfriend’s ear.

“Parker! Girl, be cool for a minute.” He looks back up at Eliot. “Eliot, man, we weren’t gonna sit there and twiddle our thumbs while our severely damaged teammate needed medical attention. You’re the hitter, the retrieval specialist, sure, best of the best, but we’re a family, remember? And family takes care of its own.”

Parker nods quickly in agreement and Eliot shifts back and forth on his feet, needing to move. But he nods before he makes for the bedroom door.

“Why is Eliot leaving?” Parker demands as she jumps up after him. Hardison pulls her back with a gentle hand.

“Baby, he’s just gotta go sometimes. He’s gonna come back. Always does. Right, Eliot?” Hardison raises his voice at Eliot’s retreating form.

He pauses for a moment, shoulders tense. “Damn straight,” is all he manages in reply before reaching the kitchen.

“Okay but there’s a banana and a pain pill on the counter. And a teddy bear!” Parker shouts anxiously.

Damned if Eliot doesn’t snatch all three before letting the door slip shut behind him.

~~~~~~~~~~

Years ago, Eliot would have blown town with nothing but the clothes on his back and the small trunk that always sits locked in the back of his closet. Headed north for a while before hopping continents. Found himself a job.

But now, Eliot just goes to the small apartment he’s never in and lays in his bed, the teddy bear loosely gripped in one hand as he just focuses on breathing away the pain. He glances at his phone to make sure there’s battery.

If there was anyone on this earth that could dodge Alec Hardison, it was Eliot Spencer. But he doesn’t want to get lost. Doesn’t want them to search for him, doesn’t want them getting hurt looking in places they shouldn’t be. He just wants some quiet, some space.

He closes his eyes, still going through his breathing rhythms, and remembers the pressure of Hardison’s hand on his shoulder, the softest brush of Parker’s fingers on his forehead. Their worried faces. Eliot growls and throws the teddy bear against the wall.

This time, he’d been too careless. Blinded by rage, by desperation to get them out, get them safe, he’d let too much happen to himself. And now they’re all going to pay for it. He’s out of commission for a few weeks at least, which means no jobs. Which means people are going to get hurt.

Of course, if word gets out that Leverage’s hitter is benched… 

Eliot’s heart races as he banishes the thought. Hardison has plenty of incomparable security measures, plus bugs sweeping the net for any mention of each of them. He can’t let his paranoia stop him from healing, so that he can be useful again.

He looks at the teddy bear lying forlornly on its side, and guiltily he gets up to retrieve the little thing. It’s wearing a bandana headband and a chef’s apron and Eliot’s mouth quirks up in a smile before he can stop himself. _Parker and her stuffed animals._

Eliot collapses back into his bed, on his back in deference to his ribs, and falls asleep with the bear tucked against his side.

He dreams of fluttering eyelids, shallow breathing, and being much, much too late.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It’s been two weeks of waiting. Parker _hates_ waiting, hates just sitting around their apartment. Climbing around in the beams and ducts of their drafty studio starts to lose its appeal when it’s all she gets to do. Hardison is adamant that they won’t take any jobs while Eliot’s hurt, that they’re a team and without the full set they’re not at full capacity and they’ll be no good to anyone while incomplete. _And,_ he always adds softly, with that small, wounded softness to his face, _Eliot wouldn’t want us to, not when we could get hurt. And in our line of work, we could always get hurt, Parker._

She can barely stand when he says their names with that voice, that reasonable, _mournful,_ voice. Parker cares about precious little in this life, but she cares about her Hardison, her team, more than anything else. More than _money._ When he’s like this, she just wants to grift, hit, and thieve until she’s fixed him. Fixed both of them, like they always fix her.

Parker hops up on the bar of the brew pub where Hardison’s fiddling with the taps.

“Hey mama. How you doin? Wanna go find something fast to borrow?” he says, well aware of her restlessness.

“I want Eliot to come back,” she answers flatly.

“Girl, he’s still in town. Still in his apartment, even. His GPS hasn’t moved except to go to his favorite grocery store. We just have to give him space. That’s all.”

“He doesn’t need space!” she blurts, face scrunched in dissatisfaction, “He needs to be taken care of! It’s what he does for us, isn’t it? Because we’re his family? So that makes it wrong that we’re not taking care of him, and we only do wrong things for good reasons.”

Hardison stops fussing with the taps to move between her legs and pull her close. She immediately wraps herself around him and buries her face in his sweater.

“He’s our Eliot,” she murmurs, “ _Ours._ ”

“I know, baby. Our Eliot. Let’s go see our Eliot.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Eliot is healing. Steadily, carefully, his body is replacing what it has lost. But…

His body is healing but his heart, his mind, feel ripped wide open. He keeps searching, restlessly, for anything at all that he can use to rebuild his defenses, a sturdier shell to shield his soft insides. But all he finds is a little stuffed bear. A poorly executed Star Trek reference used as code. A brand new climbing rig. Endless bottles of orange soda, packages of gummy frogs.

He is not a soft man, not a gentle soul. He is all sharp fragments of a human life, all anger and ache and survival. When he was a young man, he offered his life for his country, and when his country tried to throw it away without a sound, he took it back. He served no one but himself; he had bosses, contracts, but if it came between his job and his life, he always chose himself. He was no worse than the men he worked for and no worse than the men he killed— he had killed, even if his team seemed to forget. He felt nothing. He wanted nothing. The world consisted of fists and feet and blood and death, and all that propelled him forward was the unshakeable urge to die on his own terms. He was a savage thing, with more combat training than entire armies, more blood on his hands than entire governments.

But Nate Ford, Sophie Devereaux, Alec Hardison, Parker, this little misfit bunch of criminals _domesticated_ him. And they did it without leashes, without harshness. Only with kindness. Suddenly, he had a single goal, one want from this life holding his pieces together: to make sure that his team retired one day and died happy of old age, nothing else, and he knew that his own death would be in the service of this aim.

The fiercest pain of this metamorphosis was that he had lost his indifference for death. Still, he didn’t fear it but he knew that when his number was up, that when he lay bleeding and gasping in some strange place, he wouldn’t care at all about where he was going. He’d care about what he was leaving behind. 

He’d think of a lithe gymnast’s limbs, of a child’s joy and a daredevil’s nerve, of soft skin and golden hair, hanging off of his back, poking his bruises, pushing pieces of chocolate into his face, asking him question after question. He’d think of a lop-sided 1000-watt smile in a clever face, of warm eyes with no secrets, of long fingers brushing a keyboard as easily as a violin, of high-fives for morale and video games and terrible, terrible home brewed beer.

Eliot’s body is healing, but his mind is crippled with panic. He hasn’t felt like this for twenty years or more, hasn’t been small and soft on the inside since he was a bright-eyed kid, red dirt on his boots and wind in his hair. For the first time since then, he feels unprepared, vulnerable. 

Terrified.

~~~~~~~~~

“We can’t go see him without bringing something. You know he says that it’s rude to visit someone without like.. food… or something?” she scrunches her face as she tries to figure out what exactly that means for someone like Eliot. He’s very concerned with people rules, her Eliot, which doesn’t seem to fit with the rest of what she knows about him.

Are they allowed to bring not-homemade food? Neither she nor Hardison are extraordinary cooks, and in this instance she can’t bear to bring anything other than wonderful.

“Girl, quit fussing. No way we’re gonna bring some burned bisque or undercooked unagi. I got a little somethin’-somethin’ for us. You know how choosy Eliot is about where we eat out, yeah? His favorite Chinese place here in Portland— actually his only Chinese place— is run by one of his old war buddies. I just hit him up, he says he’ll stay open a little later for— and I’m quoting— ‘good ole Spence.’ So, while I try not to call him right now to make fun, anything else you think we oughtta do?”

“Board games,” she decides after a half-beat of deliberation, “that’s what people do together on nights in, right? And they have fun? Like what we do when you’re ‘too tired to go skydiving.’”

Hardison smiles softly at his lady, proud of her progress while admiring the genuine, compassion and strangeness of who she is at her core. “You got it, babe. How bout you go pick some out while I get our drinks.”

He busies himself with putting orange soda, Sprite, and beer— Eliot’s favorite— into a box. Which he almost drops when he sees what games Parker is carrying. Well, what game.

“C—. Parker. Cards Against Humanity? That is— I don’t— Are you sure Eliot will give this game even five minutes? You know he’s got a weird sense of humor. Or no sense of humor at all.”

“But it says it’s a party game for terrible people. Isn’t that kind of like what we do?”

Unsure really of how to dissuade her, Hardison shrugs and says, “Okay, but I’m throwing Settlers of Catan in the pile, too. And you’re gonna actually do some buildin’ and tradin’ instead of just hoarding precious metals, cool?”

She’s too gleeful about her terrible-people-party game to argue.


End file.
